Windies beat Sri Lanka by seven wickets in World T20
West Indies brushed aside Sri Lanka by seven wickets in their World Twenty20 Super 10 match on Sunday, with opener Andre Fletcher, brought into the side after the injured Chris Gayle was pushed down the order, smashing an unbeaten 84.
Gayle, scorer of an unbeaten century against England, has a minor hamstring injury and never made it to the crease, but his services were scarcely missed as Fletcher struck five sixes and six boundaries to seal a routine second Group One victory for the 2012 champions.
Fresh from the impressive six-wicket win over England on Wednesday, Windies skipper Darren Sammy won the toss at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium and put Sri Lanka in, trusting his batsmen to chase down any total.
Defending champions Sri Lanka slumped to a disappointing 122-9 and then had no answer to Fletcher, who played with maturity to strengthen his team’s charge for a semi-final berth.
“We know what we are capable off. We know the strength of our team. If we continue playing the kind of cricket we are accustomed to playing, we are going to lift the cup a second time,” man-of-the-match Fletcher said after the game.
The win was set up by a strong bowling performance by the Windies, with pace bowler Carlos Brathwaite drawing first blood by getting the in-form Tillakaratne Dilshan out lbw with his first ball of the match in the third over.
Dilshan, who scored 83 against Afghanistan on Thursday, had tried to set the tone, hitting his first ball for six and following that up with a boundary, but he was out for 12.
His strike partner Dinesh Chandimal also suffered a soft dismissal, when he was run out on 16 in the fifth over.
Spinner Samuel Badree took 3-12 in his four overs to wreak havoc with Sri Lanka’s top order with Lahiru Thirimanne, Chamara Kapugedera and Milinda Siriwardana all falling cheaply.
“We just kept losing wickets and by the time we reassessed, it was too late,” Sri Lanka skipper Angelo Matthews said.
Mathews and Thisara Perera had a mountain to climb to put a competitive total on the board and managed 44 runs in 46 balls for the sixth wicket but both were caught off deliveries by Dwayne Bravo to give Sri Lanka no chance.
(Reuters / Pix by GettyImages)
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Shame on our defending champ.there are options for a better t20 eleven.
1. Remove useless Mathews, Thirimane and siriwardene from t20 squad and replace some one who has some guts and strength in arms and all over body and ability for power hits.
2. Add some sort of spinners like a.mendis and senanayeke.
3. Have some matches with division three all island as division three players far better than our national side, who made shame on us.
Eventually y cant we play with out lasith, sanga m mahela. Get rid of these ridiculous thoughts. Have a firm menifesto.
Congratulations WIs! Poor Sri Lankans couldn’t score enough runs to give a chance to our bowlers. However, Thisara Prera did well and the young bowler Vandersar was impressive.
thus us what happens when we get rid of experience player like mahela an sanga both of them had more cricket in them, they should have been with the team so that the youngsters would learn from them at least the two should have been kept for a few more years
its time we had a cricket academy in SriLanka and have training camps in every district then we could have a very strong side
Oh no. Cricket is a boring game for boring people.